Which of Stories Will They be Talking About Tomorrow

We’re going to briefly going to talk about one of my favorite topics and strategies in marketing. In fact, we teach it and talk about it often in my monthly newsletter, The Copywriter’s Corner.

It’s the Robert Collier principle. Robert Collier was a famous copywriter and author who stated, as a marketer, you want to enter to conversation already going on in your client or prospects head. Using current events, holidays and borrowing from celebrity is a great way to do this. To steal a line from a political newscaster, “Which of these stories will they be talking about tomorrow?”

Current events are relatively easy, but you usually need to act quickly. Even big stories have a relatively short shelf life. As I write this, the oil spill in the gulf, and immigration are on the news, the next “Twilight” movie is due out any day and it’s expected to break all kinds of records.

Politics is always an easy target, regardless of what side of the fence you’re on. Over the past few years we’ve had bail-outs, an election, cash for clunkers, and on and one. In June of 2016, we gave our clients a ready to implement 3D mailer using gold medals to tie in to the 2016 Summer Olympics. See the video here to see a great example of this campaign.

Holidays are also a great way to get in your client’s head. There are the obvious ones like 4th of July (Hey! That’s next week!), Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, etc.

Using celebrity is also a great way to use the Collier principle. Unfortunately we know way more about the Karsashian’s than we should, and who knows what the Lohan girl will do next. See how easy that is?